Shut up for a month, Donald

Published 10:05 am Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Forget the idea of a Republican intervention.

Nothing GOP bigwigs or people like Rudy Giuliani can say to Donald Trump now will get his head straight and get him back on track.

For candidate Trump, it ought to be pretty clear by now that there is no track, no train, no schedule and no final destination.

Email newsletter signup

His track goes wherever his wandering mind and runaway ego take him at any given instant, whether he’s speaking to 3,000 people or tweeting from his bedroom.

The only human intervention that can save his campaign at this point —- and spare America four years of Hillary Clinton — is for the people who love Trump to lock him into a soundproof booth until November 9th.

Unfortunately, that’s not going to literally happen. But figuratively, it should.

Trump doesn’t need intervention. He just needs to learn when —- and how — to shut up.

He has to stop saying dumb or outrageous things that get him the daily media attention he clearly needs and craves.

Someone has to explain to him and his current and former campaign managers that by being on Page 1 every day he makes sure that Hillary Clinton will never be there.

All the conservatives on talk radio and the cable channels bitch and moan that the mainstream media don’t cover lying Hillary’s many scandals.

It’s true she is getting the usual free pass the liberal media give to Democrats every four years.

But Trump and his fumbling campaign only make it easier for the media to ignore her by feeding them a daily menu of fresh gaffes and mistakes.

So shut up, Donald. For at least a month.

Be boring. Quit winging it. Put America to sleep, like Hillary.

Read policy speeches from a teleprompter. Talk about the issues that matter —- the shortage of jobs, the no-growth economy, the $19 trillion budget.

Attack Hillary for her untrustworthiness and her ties to the D.C. establishment.

But let her and her lies get some space on the front page.

You won’t lose your core fan base. And if you stop pouring kerosene on your own fire every six hours, maybe someone at CBS will get bored and complain that Hillary hasn’t had a press conference since last year.

Who knows.

Maybe the New York Times will assign some of its investigative reporters to look as closely at the books of the Clinton Foundation as they did at Mitt Romney’s tax returns.

Maybe the Washington Post will check out those rumors about our embassy in Libya being involved with sending arms to the Syrian rebels (aka, ISIS) when Hillary was running the State Department.

The way he’s been acting lately, Trump is making it impossible for millions of Republican and independent voters who hate Hillary to vote for him.

He should have sympathized with the Kahns, not picked a fight with them.

Now he should announce he’s going to apologize to them — and use the free TV time he’d get to also slam Hillary for cynically exploiting the Kahns and their pain.

We know we can’t trust Hillary Clinton. She’s a proven liar.

But it seems that every other day Trump or his former campaign manager help make Hillary’s point that we can’t trust Trump with the nuclear codes.

And therein lies the voter’s dilemma for this presidential election.

 

Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant and author. Send comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com.